Cookeville Requesting Design Work Bids On CPAC & Dogwood Park

Cookeville Leisure Services requesting engineering and design bids for the creation of a new Dogwood Park entrance and renovations to CPAC.

Leisure Services Director Rick Woods said he has always wanted to put in an entrance off of Walnut Avenue. The police department relocated to Neal Street from Broad Street last year, freeing up a large parking lot area adjacent to the park.

“We can take some of that space and make it nice, landscape, make it look attractive and make it a clear understandable entry way into the park,” Woods said.

Woods said he hopes design work can be complete next spring. The Cookeville Performing Arts Center would receive renovations to the lobby bathrooms. Woods said those facilities have not been upgraded since 1979.

Woods said the CPAC renovations would bring the building up to current codes.

“If you’ve been to CPAC during a full house, you’ll know that restrooms, particularly women’s restrooms, is just not large enough,” Woods said. “We need to expand it. We need to make it larger. We need to make it more convenient for the public to use.”

The new Dogwood Park entrance will lead into the Performance Pavilion area of Dogwood Park.

“If they’re parking across the street on Walnut, that’s public parking, some people park there, or park in the parking lot behind the Performing Arts Center,” Woods said. “This gives them a clear and understandable way to safely get into Dogwood Park from the West Side.”

Woods said he hopes to have the designs drawn up and approved for both projects at the same time.

“This is a design phase, so we are looking for design at this point, this is not a construction phase,” Woods said. “The design will go through the process of meeting and talking about what is needed with the company that we select. Get to the specifics and review some of the preliminary designs, and then they will do construction design drawings and engineering.”